Top 10 Java stories of 2017: Angular, Eclipse, ML, and more

What did we read as the year drew to a close? We pop a bottle of champagne and pour some bubbly as we take a look at some of our top stories from the whole of 2017, from Java to Eclipse, Angular to ML, and more!

1. Angular 5 is here

No big surprises as our post on Angular 5 was the top post for the year as as fans flocked to see what was new in the end-of-year release for this framework.

Version 5.0.0 of Angular, pentagonal-donut is here! This major release contains an abundance of new features and bugfixes; its aim is to continue the Angular team’s focus on making it smaller, faster, and easier to use. But even though we’re still in awe of the release, it’s business as usual for the Angular team. Case in point: the release candidate period for 5.1.0 has begun.

2. Angular 4: Top features you need to know

Despite all the fanfare about the latest release, Angular 4 has a remarkable staying power. In this post from right after the release of Angular 4, Karsten Sitterberg and Thomas Kruse show all the innovations, give tips on migrating and take a guess at what Angular 5 will look like.

3. 20 JavaFX real-world applications

This evergreen post from Dirk Lemmerman and Alexander Casall goes over JavaFX. In November 2015, Dirk Lemmermann (Freelancer) and I (Alexander Casall) had a JavaOne session about JavaFX Real World Applications. We showed a bunch of apps that we made for our customers or where we had contributions in development. This article summarizes the talk by showing the applications that we’ve talked about. In addition, I asked some other JavaFX developers if they want to contribute their apps to this blog post.

SEE MORE: Top 10 stories of November: All about Angular old and new, Java, ML & more

4. Building a secure REST API with Spring Data REST and Java 8

Another one from the archives: the team at techdev show us how they combined an AngularJS, Java 8 and Spring 4 backend with a REST API to build an office data-tracking tool.

REST APIs are a great interface for both, backend-to-backend communication and the quite popular Single Page Applications (SPAs). At techdev, we built trackr, our own tool to track our working times, vacation requests, travel expenses, invoices and more.

5. Eclipse, NetBeans or IntelliJ: Which is the best Java IDE?

This comparison between three Java IDE’s has remarkable staying power. Eclipse’s Luna release brought a range of interesting new functions – but how does the Java IDE stand up to rivals NetBeans and IntelliJ?

For quite some time now, Eclipse has had a thorn in its IDE. With NetBeans and IntelliJ ever at its heels, the Eclipse development environment has been battling to hold sway over the community. It’s about time we compared the big three in Java IDEs.

6. Spring Boot tutorial: REST services and microservices

In this helpful tutorial, Michael Gruczel uses a simple example to show how to set up a REST-based microservice with Spring Boot.

The times of Java EE application server and monolithic software architectures are nearly gone. Hardware is not getting faster anymore, but internet traffic is still increasing. Platforms have to support scaling out. Load must be distributed to several hosts. Microservice-based architectures can offer solutions for this requirement. Apart from the better scaling, microservices offer faster development cycles, dynamic scaling depending on load and improved failover behavior.

SEE MORE: Top 10 Java stories of October: Angular 5, JDK 9, ML and more

7. Using Apache NetBeans (incubating) with JDK 9

With the release of JDK 9 and NetBeans in transition to Apache, should you wait or move to a different development environment? Because NetBeans IDE 8.2 does not support JDK 9, those wanting to use JDK 9 do need to make some choices.

8. Top 5 machine learning libraries for Java

Machine learning turned out to be one of the big topics from 2017. Companies are scrambling to find enough programmers capable of coding for ML and deep learning. Are you ready? Here are five of our top picks for machine learning libraries for Java.

9. Java performance tutorial – How fast are the Java 8 streams?

In this oldie but goodie from the JAX Magazine, JAX London speaker Angelika Langer answers the most important question for anyone using Java streams: are they really faster?

Angular 2 is already supported —to different degrees— in many current tools. We looked at the three major IDEs: Eclipse, NetBeans and IntelliJ IDEA (or WebStorm) and drew some conclusions about what works and what doesn’t.